"Do you swim, Mr. Prothero?" the lady asked, though a moment before
she had determined that she would never ask him a question again.
But this time it was a lucky question.

"Prothero mopped up the lot of us at Minchinghampton with his diving
and swimming," Benham explained, and the tension was relaxed.

Lady Marayne spoke of her own swimming, and became daring and
amusing at her difficulties with local feeling when first she swam
in the pond. The high road ran along the far side of the pond--"And
it didn't wear a hedge or anything," said Lady Marayne. "That was
what they didn't quite like. Swimming in an undraped pond. . . ."

Prothero had been examined enough. Now he must be entertained. She
told stories about the village people in her brightest manner. The
third story she regretted as soon as she was fairly launched upon
it; it was how she had interviewed the village dressmaker, when Sir
Godfrey insisted upon her supporting local industries. It was very
amusing but technical. The devil had put it into her head. She had
to go through with it. She infused an extreme innocence into her
eyes and fixed them on Prothero, although she felt a certain
deepening pinkness in her cheeks was betraying her, and she did not
look at Benham until her unhappy, but otherwise quite amusing
anecdote, was dead and gone and safely buried under another. . . .

But people ought not to go about having dressmakers for mothers. . . .

And coming into other people's houses and influencing their sons. . . .